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December 13, 2012 04:44 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Dogpile.com Releases Its Top Search Results for 2012

Users are searching the web to connect and do more daily
activities online and off

BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--With 2012 winding to a close, it’s time for Dogpile® to take a fond look
back at the terms that our users searched for the most. There were quite
a few noteworthy events in 2012: The first social media Olympics, the
most expensive U.S. presidential election in history, and more
celebrities bursting onto the national stage as others quietly slipped
off. All in all, 2012 was pretty exciting.

Out of the millions of “fetches,” or searches, queried on www.Dogpile.com
this year, we put together a list of the most popular ones.

Social Media and Shopping Sites Top Them All

Socializing and shopping were the top two online interests in 2012.
Facebook has topped our list of search terms for four years in a row,
leaving no question about it: Americans “like” using Facebook to
socialize online. Facebook's IPO in May could also have helped it
maintain the top overall ranking yet again. In order of popularity,
YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, and Tumblr were also
listed among our users’ top searched social networks.

E-commerce sites Amazon, Craigslist, and eBay were all among the top
five searches in 2012. This may be both a sign of an improving economic
environment and further evidence that Dogpile users are getting
increasingly comfortable shopping online. Walmart tops the list of
Dogpile users’ favorite brick-and-mortar retailer search terms, followed
by Lowe's, Home Depot, Best Buy, and Target.

Last year, Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber secured top overall search
spots. This year, however, the oldest of the Kardashian reality show
trio missed the top search list, and only made it onto the top 10
celebrity list. To our surprise, and perhaps yours, of the stars that
Dogpile users entered into the search box, the only man to make the list
was Dr. Oz, who jumped all the way to number two and bumped Bieber right
off. However, Bieber’s ex-girlfriend, Selena Gomez, did make the top 10
celebrity list.

Dogpile users also sniffed out information on the biggest breaking, tech
and entertainment news stories of 2012. Not surprisingly, the number one
news item was the United States presidential election. President Obama
was the most searched candidate, followed by Mitt Romney and then Rick
Santorum.

Following news of the election, the release of Apple’s iPhone 5 came in
second on the list, followed by Hurricane Sandy and her devastation on
the east coast. The 2012 London Olympics and Whitney Houston’s death
round out the top 5 news items. The David Petraeus sex scandal made a
late entry for popular 2012 news stories. Whether it was good news or
bad, curious users came to Dogpile to find out what was going on.

Catching up on non-stop celebrity gossip and world events is easy with
Dogpile’s search features and favorite fetches. In addition to shopping,
socializing, and reading news on the web, Dogpile made a list of some of
our users’ favorite online diversions. YouTube was the favorite place to
watch the latest videos and Netflix took the favorite spot for watching
movies and TV shows online. Following behind this list, but well above
several thousands of other pop culture searches, E.L. James’s “Fifty
Shades of Grey,” English-Irish boy band One Direction, and Korean rapper
Psy’s “Gangnam Style” placed among users top entertainment searches.
Dogpile users did another type of search online with the use of dating
websites to help find someone special to meet offline. Plenty of Fish
took Match.com’s top spot as the preferred dating site for Dogpile users.

Finally, Dogpile users searched for the latest and greatest consumer
electronics. Last year, the newest generation Apple iPad and iPhone
topped the list, and 2012 is no different. With the launch of the iPad 3
in March and the iPhone 5 in September, Dogpile users were clearly out
to learn more about these much-anticipated, new tech toys. Amazon’s
Kindle outranked Barnes & Noble's Nook, and even Google’s new tablet,
the Nexus 7, snuck onto the list. Whether users were searching for
reviews on their tech gadgets, finding stores to purchase them, or
fetching cool features to try on their new tech tools, Dogpile helped
them sniff out what they wanted.

Looking back on the top searches of 2012, what Dogpile users seemingly
wanted most was to connect with others on social networking sites, to
sell or shop on websites like eBay, Craigslist and Amazon, or to get
their latest news and entertainment updates. Thanks to our partnerships
with Google and Yahoo!, as well as our new partnership with Russia’s
leading search engine, Yandex, we spent 2012 providing our users with
the most comprehensive search results available on the web. Now, we look
forward to moving beyond the Mayan prophecy of 12/21/12 and, instead, to
continue helping Dogpile users find more of what they want to search for
in 2013.

For millions of people every day, Dogpile goes beyond search as usual by
providing a fun and engaging place to discover the web and all it has to
offer through comprehensive search results from leading search partners.
Dogpile is the flagship search engine of the InfoSpace search service,
which also operates the branded search sites, MetaCrawler® and
WebCrawler®. InfoSpace is a leading provider of white label search and
monetization solutions, and is a business unit of Blucora™ (NASDAQ:
BCOR). Learn more about InfoSpace and Blucora at www.blucora.com.